RailTel, NIC and NICSI sign tripartite MoU which will facilitate effective roll out of NIC’s e-Office and SPARROW services in user organizations

RailTel Corporation of India (RailTel), a Central Government PSU of Ministry of Railways National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Govt. of India, and National Informatics Centre Services Incorporated (NICSI), a Government of India Enterprise under NIC have entered into a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for providing One-Stop Managed End-to-End NIC’s e-Office and SPARROW services to user organizations. 

More Details:

  • The tripartite MoU has the objective of ‘Partnering for providing one-stop managed end-to-end NIC’s e-Office and SPARROW product deployment, hosting, core roll-out, technical support and system administration services to user organizations by leveraging and synergizing their facilities and capabilities with each other’.
  • The MoU will enable to cater the requirements of user organizations jointly by NIC, NICSI and RailTel by addressing the requirements for different components to enable NIC’s eOffice and SPARROW roll-out. The NIC’s e-Office aims to support Governance by ushering in more effective and transparent inter and Intra-Government processes. 
  • The vision of NIC’s e-Office is to achieve a simplified, responsive, effective and transparent and paperless working of all Government Offices, at the Central, State and District levels. 
  • The product brings together the independent functions and systems under a single frame. Post to pandemic era, the requirement of Digital and Paperless office functioning is felt more than ever and the MoU intends to pace up and cover-up the deployment of NIC’s e-Office and SPARROW in the yet to be on boarded organizations in accordance to the vision of Digital India.
  • Recently, RailTel completed the implementation of mega e-Office project for Indian Railways over their 216 establishments (zones/divisions/CTIs/workshops etc). Currently, there are more than 1.38 lacs users of Indian Railways on e-Office platform handling 20 lacs+ e-files and have created 1.36 Cr e-receipts. 
  • This is one of the biggest NIC e-Office roll-out in the country. e-Office implementation has resulted in enhanced transparency, quick & systematic disposal of files, timely monitoring of pending files and off course reduction in carbon footprint by fostering paperless office culture. 

Talking about it, Chairman & Managing Director, RailTel Shri Puneet Chawla said, “ RailTel has, by way of expansion, diversification & upgradation, has now emerged as a prominent ICT provider and one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country. The biggest asset with us is our own Pan-India optic fiber network of 61000+RKM (and growing) along Railway track. In addition, RailTel has Two Tier-III uptime certified Data Centres, MeitY empaneled RailCloud and a specialized Security Operation Centre. We have been executing a number of ICT projects like e-Office for Indian Railways, Hospital Management Information System, telemedicine projects, IP based Video Surveillance Services, web and AI based attendance systems, campus Wi-Fi etc. The assets and domain experience and expertise of RailTel will be of great assistance in implementing the objectives of this tripartite MoU.”

On the occasion, Shri Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary MeitY and Chairman NICSI informed that e-Office is being extensively used by the Government Departments at Central and State level as well as PSUs across the country. He added that e-Office proved to be the lifeline in keeping the Government offices functional during the recent Covid times. He expressed hope that subsequent to this MoU, NICSI and NIC could also leverage this association for offering other NIC/NICSI Software Products using RailTel managed cloud services.

Smt. Rachna Srivastava, DDG & HoG, NIC conveyed that the eFile module alone is being used in the country by more than 8.77 Lakh Officials and more than 3.19 Crore Files have been created so far. Besides, SPARROW module is also being extensively used for filing APARs by the Government Officials. She added that the eOffice system is enabled for local language and many States like Uttar Pradesh, Telangana etc. are using it in their respective languages.

About RailTel:

  • RailTel, a “Mini Ratna (Category-I)” Central Public Sector Enterprise under Ministry of Railways, is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India optic fiber network covering several towns& cities and rural areas of the country.
  • Along with a strong a reliable network of 61000+ RKM of Optic fibre, RailTel has two MeitY empaneled tier III data centers as well. With its Pan India high-capacity network,RailTel is working towards creating a knowledge society at various fronts and has been selected for implementation of various mission-mode projects for the Government of India in the telecom field. 
  • RailTel offers a bundle of services like, MPLSVPN, Telepresence, leased line, Tower Co-location, Data center services etc. RailTel is also working with the Indian Railways to transform railway stations into digital hub by providing public Wi-Fi at railway stations across the country and 6100+ stations are live with RailTel’s RailWire Wi-Fi.

Source: RailTel – Press Release